Rusty Zimmerman is the Founder/Artist of the Free Portrait Project, and the portrait artist to former Governor Andrew Cuomo. His 200 portraits from life and recorded oral histories of Crown Heights residents exhibited at Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Children's Museum, and Brooklyn Borough Hall. His work has been featured in the New York Times, the Bloomberg's CityLab, News12Brooklyn, NY-1, and the Saatchi Gallery Magazine in London. He has lectured at Wellesley and Long Island University, and has been offered an Ellson grant at Harvard. Zimmerman lives and works in Kensington, South Brooklyn.